Apr 26, 2012

You must have noticed I haven't been writing too often for Gnome's Lair lately, but a) that's about to change and b) I've been incredibly busy with both IndieGames and working on that bundle I keepmentioning. The good news is that the very first Bundle In A Box is just around the corner and has gotten a subtitle that shouldn't really shock anyone: Adventure Bundle. What's more, our teaser site is already up and you should really visit it over at bundle-in-a-box.com. Oh, and do find out more about it over at the Kyttaro Games blog.

Apr 20, 2012

Following the excellent blogging style of both freeindiegam.es and OW Videogames I'll simply urge you to play Roar Rampage. You'll play as a pixel-art and very green version of Godzilla in a brilliant, physics-based, side-scrolling take on the Rampage! formula. Expect to be entertained.

Apr 18, 2012

Okay, one thousand free games would be a tad excessive, but half a dozen ones would be more than appropriate for this most interesting of springs. Besides, I hadn't done one of those freeware lists for quite some time now and the voices were rather angry; they also insisted on being as eclectic as possible...

Vidiot: Described by its creator as Halo meets Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, this is a truly demented offering and a delightfully weird collection of mini-games. Oh, and it can easily be used do emotionally scar your kids and/or pets.

Poacher: Metroidvania done by wise game critic and accomplished adventure designer Yahtzee and done right. Also, with a healthy does of humour. Also, also, one of the very few games pitting you against rabbits. Fluffy ones too.

Orbiter 2010: Still haven't managed to buy Mass Effect 3? Well, I wouldn't worry. Orbiter is here and it will let you explore space in a much more realistic and cost-effective way. Should probably last longer too, as this is a proper simulation.

Masters of Constantinople: Text away in a tale of intrigue, mystery and Byzantine betrayals while the Empire crumbles and knowledge has to be preserved. It's a very interesting choose-your-own-adventure affair with more than a few meaningful choices.

Epic Sax Game: Because it almost sounds rude and is the most brutally hard rhythm game I've ever encountered. Still, persevere and you'll be rewarded.

Apr 10, 2012

One more issue of the finest of adventure gaming fanzines has been released and you can download it over at Adventure Lantern. It is customarily free, has been crafted using only the best PDF materials available and sports reviews of J.U.L.I.A., Amnesia, Limbo, Cthulhu Saves the World and Dead Cyborg, an interview on Delaware St. John 4 and more than a few newsbits. So, uhm, hooray!

Apr 9, 2012

I am so glad I decided to not provide you with review scores reader dear; so absolutely delighted. Summing up J.U.L.I.A. in a simple score would have been utterly impossible. Even deciding on what I really thought about it turned out to be pretty taxing. Better though to start at the beginning.

J.U.L.I.A. is a science-fiction game, casting you as Rachel Mannors, the sole survivor of a space expedition gone spectacularly wrong. Rachel, an awkwardly 3D modeled yet decently voiced character, is woken up from cryo-sleep by J.U.L.I.A., the spaceship's AI, only to discover she's all alone in a malfunctioning ship light-years away from Earth and apparently stranded in a solar system with dully named planets. What's more, something has gone spectacularly wrong on said planets. Something that eventually led to the death of the rest of the crew and the endangerment of alien life.

Truth be said, J.U.L.I.A., and that's the last time I bother with these fullstops, has a very interesting, if slightly melodramatic, plot. A proper science fiction story to be precise, that isn't afraid to touch upon important matters and never fails to be atmospheric. What's more, JULIA is one of those very rare games you can't simply describe with a screenshot and a genre categorization. You'll have to go on and play it (its demo at the very least) in order to fully understand its gameplay; you know, just like back in the old days, when reading a review and looking at some pics in a magazine simply left you bewildered...

At its core though the game can be described as a choose-your-own-adventure styled piece of interactive fiction with an interesting graphical GUI and a ton of mini-games thrown in. Needless to say, the text adventure-y parts of the game are by far the best. They are well written, brilliantly supported by the graphics and cut-scenes and -especially towards the end- by a fantastic map system. The problem though is that these section are pretty short and essentially without any challenge to speak of.

Most of the challenge is to be found in the aforementioned mini-games and, sadly, this is where JULIA's main problem lies. The vast majority of mini-games on offer are ridiculously easy and feel largely unconnected to the game's setting and the situations at hand. What's more, the difficult ones are usually both too hard and badly explained, making for a gaming experience that ranges between dull and frustrating.

On the other hand, I am really glad I played JULIA. Despite its shortcomings, it's a very brave, very ambitious and definitely innovative game with a strong focus on telling a story that's actually worth sharing. I do believe it's the first step in the right direction; a diamond in the rough, an impressive new way of approaching interactive fiction and an idea that has to be nurtured and supported, if only to give the devs a chance at perfecting their formula.

Apr 5, 2012

Dan Marshal of Size Five Games (formerly known as Zombie Cow Studios) has been crafting indie games for more than a few years now and is actually preparing something rather ambitious even as we speak, which, well, does make sense for an indie developer I suppose. Anyway. Here's the interview with the man that can be both funny and, funnily enough, designing anything from run-and-gun to point-and-click games:

Though I'm pretty sure it's not needed, could you please introduce yourself to the illustrious Gnome's Lair readers?

Hello! My name's Dan, I run Size Five Games which used to be called Zombie Cow Studios until I realised how much I hated that name. So I changed it, which kind of weirdly worked out because all the press about what a stupid thing to do it was meant sales shot up.

I made a couple of adventure games called "Ben There, Dan That!" and "Time Gentlemen, Please!" which were very well received. We then did that Channel4 sex-ed game called Privates which everyone just referred to as "the vagina game".

Mind you, I do believe I remember your work ever since those PC Zone articles on Gibbage. Is that really how you entered the world of game development?

Not really - as a kid I always used to tinker about with the likes of Klik 'n Play. One day I decided to learn 'real' programming and picked up a C primer. I'd been working on Gibbage for about 18 months, teaching myself how to code along the way, when I dropped the editor of PC Zone a line to see if he'd be interested in a developer diary. I decided it was a fairly unique thing to be doing, since the indie scene was waaaaaay smaller back then. Anyway, he accepted and that's how I started doing bits and bobs for PC Zone. But the truth is that the 'monthly updates' on my progress were largely things that had happened about a year previously.

And you have now moved on to the world of BAFTA ceremonies. Quite an impressive achievement. How did you do it?

Magic, largely.

In reality: no idea. Channel 4 gave me some money to think up a stupid (albeit sexy) idea, which I then spent on assembling a team, kind of like something out of a blockbuster movie, but way more low-key and with more nerds involved. So I grabbed Lemmy and Binky, who have gone on to work wonders with Project Zomboid, and they programmed and arted a load of stuff. I cried a lot, things went wrong, more things went wrong, and then at the end a game came out.

After that, it was up for a BAFTA which, preposterously, it won.

You've also been instrumental in the recent rebirth of adventure gaming and have managed to remind everyone just how delightfully wild a point-and-click game can be. Why did you decide to go on with Ben There, Dan That?

Ben There, Dan That! actually started life as a stupid little game to bring some attention to Gibbage, which was selling for REAL MONEY. After two years of solid development, I wanted something small and silly to do, and BTDT was the result - it was largely a product of Ben and I going to the pub, having stupid conversations, which I then programmed into a silly-but-charming little game.

On release, it wound up being WAY more popular than Gibbage and eclipsing it entirely.

What were you aiming for?

We were just making a game like the old Tim Schafer/ LucasArts ones we used to love; there really was no big 'thinking' behind it. We weren't aiming to bring back the genre or anything. We were just doing it for the love.

Was it its success that spawned Time Gentlemen, Please?

Yeah, BTDT did really well. We'd talked about doing a sequel, and left it kind of open for the possibility, but all we had was a name. BTDT had done really well and I was getting lots of emails requesting another - Ben and I went to the pub on the understanding that if we could think of something good that didn't feel trite and forced, we'd do it. We wound up sitting in the boozer crying with laughter over some of the stuff we'd come up with, and I guess from there we had no choice...

And how about another sequel? Think it will be possible? Hope it would be able to live up to them lofty expectations?

We're looking into it. The third game, Revenge of the Balloon-Headed Mexican, wound up getting canned for various reasons, which can pretty much be summed up as: it was exactly the same thing again. So, yeah, we've toyed with various other ways of doing another sequel, and it's certainly a possibility when we finally work out an amazing way of doing it that feels fresh and different enough.

Considered the crowd-funding solution?

For a new Dan and Ben game? Nah. I'm generally anti-alpha funding. Not for other devs, I think it's great for them. But mainly because I do all the work; Ben helps with the design stuff, but I do all the code and art and most of the writing and design... so if I suddenly die horribly, all that money would be for nothing and angry gamers would basically wind up forcing Ben to suddenly learning programming and Photoshop. It'd be a disaster. There'd be binary all over the place, peoples' computers exploding. Doesn't bear thinking about.

What's more, I'm a bit worried about alpha funding from an 'entitlement' point of view - some of the devs I've spoken to have found their angsty backers constantly berating them for crimes like 'taking a weekend off'. One guy told me he was living in a perpetual crunch, because if he stops his backers get angry. I'm too laid back for any of that sort of nonsense.

As soon as I run out of money, I will change my mind entirely.

You do love variety, don't you? From 2D shooters, to puzzle games, to full-blown adventures, to the run and gun of Privates and the stealthy Swindle. How difficult is it to successfully design all those decidely different games? Don't you confuse yourself?

I guess it comes from the fact that I'm an eclectic gamer - I love all sorts of different things. Growing up I was all about the adventure games and the platformers, but I'm a massive FPS/ third person nut as well. I dabble in everything from little freeware indie games to big RPGs. I quite like the fact I'm constantly doing different things, it means there's fresh passion behind every project. If I was still making point-and-clicks, I imagine they'd have gone pretty stale by now, whereas I'm itching to do something like that again...

On to Privates then... were you shocked when people (especially those Xbox people) considered a funny and deeply educational game offensive?

No, not really. I knew from the off getting it on Xbox would be a challenge- their Rules and Regulations are laid out for everyone to read, and Privates broke most of them. I'd kind of hoped it might just get through because of all the frightfully-worthy educational content. Sadly, it turned out rules is rules. That whole thing wasn't nearly as exciting in real life as the screaming "MICROSOFT BANS VAGINA GAME" headlines. As far as I'm aware, no one at Microsoft even looked at it. An Xbox contact played it, said it was ace, but the rules won't bend and it was a mite too saucy. That was all.

It's not actually very offensive. There's a couple of icky bits - what I wasn't prepared for was most of the ire came from people ewwwwing over the inclusion of pubic hairs. I now realise that was probably from teenagers who haven't seen a vagina outside of RedTube.

Then again, how did you (and the brilliant Privates team of course) manage to make a game that can actually warn about venereal disease in such downright enjoyable way?

Ha, no idea. The gameplay's pretty simple, because despite all the 'it's rude' protestations it's actually designed for kids. I don't know if you've seen a 13 year old play a game - it's tempting to think they're all Call of Duty whizzkids, but the reality is they're exactly as rotten as we all were when we were that age. It's a nice, pretty, stylish game with some funny bits and some great voice acting, I think that's what really got older people enjoying it. It's an easy romp, nothing too stressful.

You seem to be mainly developing for Windows. Any particular reasons?

Yeah, PC development is great. No barriers to entry, no one breathing down my neck. If I had any talent, I could make a game in a weekend and be selling it online first thing on Monday morning with no forms to fill in whatsoever - that's a huge draw.

There's something really satisfying about seeing your game running on a console, but from a boring business point of view Windows makes a lot of sense.

I'd love to support Linux and Mac, but the adventure games are made with AGS - as soon as that supports Linux and Mac I'll look into doing ports. Privates and The Swindle are made with XNA, so for the time being they're locked to Windows too...

Would you like to have more, relatively at least, open platforms like iOS, Android and Windows available to you? Any plans of bringing your games on mobile platforms?

If AGS had an iOS port, I'd look into making BTDT and TGP for it, but it's not a straight port; they'd have to be re-jigged for the control method. I can see them also being quite fiddly on the tiny screen, so it'd be more work than you might imagine. I'd consider it, but if AGS suddenly worked with iOS I'd probably be more interested in making a smaller, voiced, made-for-the-device Dan and Ben game than struggling to make the existing ones fit.

You are currently working on The Swindle. How would you describe it?

I originally described it as being like Sonic the Hedgehog meets Deus Ex, and I think that's still pretty much spot on - it feels like a platform game, but with multiple path sneaking, shooting, hacking and upgrading, that sort of thing. It's a cartoonish Steampunk game about thieving money, upgrading your kit and going back to thieve more.

Judging by your Twitter comments you have already made quite some progress. Happy with the development so far?

Yeah, it's taking longer than I'd imagined to get the basics set up, but it's finally all coming together. The AI's finally up and about, wandering the halls and chasing after you if you're doing something naughty, so it's finally starting to feel like a game. I'm just toying with various different bits and pieces right now, seeing what works and what doesn't. I'm having a blast, my job is amazing.

The art style seems lovely too.

The big headache at the moment is the art - I'm on the verge of scrapping the current graphics and starting afresh with something a bit bolder... we'll see.

Any other comments kind sir?

None, I'm afraid. I think I've used up all the words I know. My Twitter is @danthat, go there please.

[This very interview has also been (cross-)posted over at the lovely IndieGames.com]

Apr 3, 2012

I know you don't always follow my twitter feed, oh not-so-faithful reader, for you would have otherwise noticed I've also started blogging over at the venerable (and most excellent) IndieGames.com. No, really. I've already written about Twine, The Sea Will Claim Everything and Delaware St. John 4, see? And I do hope to follow this up with more than a few interviews, previews, reviews and news bits. Oh, and a semi-regular thing about game creation tools, so, uhm, have a look will you? Who knows? I might even attempt something more retro-focused too...